Body

The genome sequence of a 24,000-year-old Siberian individual has provided a key piece of the puzzle in the quest for Native American origins. The ancient Siberian demonstrates genomic signatures that are basal to present-day western Eurasians and close to modern Native Americans. This surprising finding has great consequences for our understanding of how and from where ancestral Native Americans descended, and also of the genetic landscape of Eurasia 24,000 years ago.

A University of Colorado Cancer Center study published today in the journal Cancer shows that using crizotinib to treat ALK positive non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) appears to reduce kidney function when assessed by one of the most commonly used clinical methods. Whether this reflects a true effect of crizotinib on kidney function, or only on the accuracy of this particular method for assessing it is being studied.

Digital activism is usually nonviolent and tends to work best when social media tools are combined with street-level organization, according to new research from the University of Washington.

The findings come from a report released today (Nov. 20) by the Digital Activism Research Project run by Philip Howard, UW professor of communication, information and international studies. Founded by Howard in 2012, the project applies rigorous empirical social science methods to the study of global digital activism.

Food transit through the small intestine affects the body's absorption of nutrients and, consequently, our health. The discovery that food transit time is regulated by a hormone indicates new ways to increase the intestinal absorption of nutrients, and thus potentially treat malnutrition.

One of the tasks of the gut microbiota is to break down essential nutrients from our diet to provide a usable energy source in the colon.

Even with more prescriptions for growth hormone, children and adolescents with chronic kidney disease were less likely to grow to normal height ranges if they came from lower-income families, according to research funded by the National Institutes of Health. Results from the Chronic Kidney Disease in Children (CKiD) Study are published in the December issue of the American Journal of Kidney Diseases and online today at http://www.ajkd.org.

Philadelphia, Pa. (November 21, 2013) - Follow-up in older adults shows a high rate of anisometropia, or differing levels of visual abnormalities between eyes, reports a study in Optometry and Vision Science, official journal of the American Academy of Optometry.

The current "gold standard" test for measuring vitamin D status may not accurately diagnose vitamin D deficiency in black individuals. In an article in the Nov. 21 New England Journal of Medicine, a team of researchers report finding that genetic differences in a vitamin D carrier protein referred to as D-binding protein may explain the discrepancy between the prevalence of diagnosed vitamin D deficiency in black Americans – based on measuring the molecule 25-hydroxyvitamin D (25OHD) – and a lack of the usual symptoms of vitamin deficiency.

BOSTON— In the largest study of its kind, people who ate a daily handful of nuts were 20 percent less likely to die from any cause over a 30-year period than were those who didn't consume nuts, say scientists from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Men who are unemployed for more than two years show signs of faster ageing in their DNA, a new study has found.

Researchers at Imperial College London and the University of Oulu, Finland studied DNA samples from 5,620 men and women born in Finland in 1966.

In a study published today in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers looked at the association of nut consumption with total and cause-specific mortality among 76,464 women in the Nurses' Health Study and 42,498 men in the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. Consumption of nuts, including tree nuts (such as almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, hazelnuts, macadamias, pecans, pine nuts, pistachios and walnuts), was inversely associated with total mortality in both men and women, independent of other predictors for death.

Deadly amphibian disease chytridiomycosis has caused the extinction of Darwin's frogs, believe scientists from the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Universidad Andrés Bello (UNAB), Chile.

Although habitat disturbance is recognised as the main threat to the two existing species of Darwin's frogs (the northern Rhinoderma rufum endemic to Chile, and the southern Rhinoderma darwinii from Chile and Argentina), this cannot account for the plummeting population and disappearance from most of their habitat.

WASHINGTON -- A Georgetown University professor published in the online journal PLOS ONE the first study explaining why drugs designed to fight off malaria stop working in some people with the disease.

Malaria, a mosquito-borne disease caused by a parasite, killed more than 650,000 people in 2010 – most of them children in Africa, according to the World Health Organization.

In the field of drug design, the protein K-Ras is legendary. It's been on everyone's "target" list for more than 30 years due to its status as the most commonly mutated oncogene in human cancers. Despite this high profile, K-Ras has earned a reputation in scientific circles as being "undruggable" because many pharmaceutical, biotech, and academic laboratories have failed to design a drug that successfully targets the mutant gene.

A strategy developed by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)-based investigators to increase levels of beneficial high-density lipoprotein (HDL) has been shown for the first time to be effective in non-human primates. The approach uses tiny antisense sequences to block the action of microRNAs that would otherwise inhibit a protein required for generation of HDL, the "good cholesterol" that helps remove harmful lipids from the body. The report appears in the November 20 Science Translational Medicine.

Rosemont, Ill – Each year, close to 2 million people in the United States visit their doctor for shoulder pain associated with a rotator cuff injury. Approximately one-third of rotator cuff tears will require surgery, with the remaining injuries benefiting from nonsurgical treatment including pain medication and rehabilitation exercises. To help physicians determine the best treatment for each patient, the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons (AAOS) recently released Appropriate Use Criteria (AUC) covering five different treatments for rotator cuff injuries.